Fast Times at Torchwood High
by paycheckgurl
Summary: New transfer student Gwen Cooper has manged to get a detention for tardiness on her first day, following a decision to chase after a mysterious American student. Why does he keeping asking if she and her fellow detention mates have "figured it out yet"?


_Written for Day Three of Torchwood Fest: AU. High School AUs are classic. Incidentally, I'm also not the biggest fan of them._

Fast Times at Torchwood High

Gwen Cooper clung to the sides of her leather jacket, which she wore over a schoolgirl uniform. The teenaged girl was more than cable of being outspoken, but she still lacked a certain confidence. Being a new transfer student would do that to you. She wasn't sure about leaving her boyfriend Rhys and best friend Andy behind at her old school, but the full scholarship to Torchwood Preparatory High had been an offer her mum had been adamant she not pass up. Torchwood only took the best, and seldom recruited.

She marched down to her new locker assignment to put away the extra notebook she brought along and took just what she'd needed. She set off and tried to find her way to her first class. The way there was a dizzying maze.

"Hello, I'm new, can you help me find my way to class?" she called to the first student she saw.

He looked at her. Blue piercing eyes. Chiseled jawline. Artfully tossed dark hair.

"Gwen Copper," he said with a noticeably American accent. "Have you noticed what's wrong here yet?"

"How…how did you know my name?" she asked taken aback.

"Guess not then."

And he dodged through the hallways.

"Hey, wait!" She chased after him like Alice chasing the white rabbit. Because that's what you do when you're lost and confused, apparently. There were no other students around her. Just the one. The handsome American one wearing a strange, old military coat over his uniform.

She ran, and ran. Until she noticed she was a full twenty minutes late for her first class.

Breathless. She entered.

She honestly couldn't remember any details about her first period teacher, despite priding herself a tad on her memory of faces-it'd help her when she joined the police one day. What she did remember is how she'd been tardy enough to get detention on her first day.

Detention was held after school. In the basement. The dank, barely finished basement that had to be about 100 years old. There were three other students with her. An Asian girl who was shyly looking to the floor, a well put together boy sitting quietly, and a black haired boy wearing a smirk.

"Hey new girl, what are you in for?" the black haired boy, well sneered would be a good word, in a London accent.

"I was late. The teacher is a bit strict seeing as how it's my first day and all, but I guess there's a reason Torchwood is so exclusive. What about you…" she trailed off, prompting him to give his name.

"Owen. That's Toshiko and Tea Boy."

"You can call me Tosh," said the girl, also with a London accent.

"Tea Boy" rolled his eyes rather impressively. "Ianto," he said.

"Why does he call you Tea Boy?"

"I work at Starbucks. I make his coffee regularly."

She smiled at him as she took her seat.

"And I put a whoopee cushion under Tea Boy's seat to answer your question."

"I made him believe I laced his lunch with a laxative in retaliation. Apparently just suggesting you mildly poisoned your peers is punishable according to the school bylaws."

Gwen rose her eyebrows.

"I hacked the school security system," said Tosh.

It was Owen who rose his eyes in surprise at that one.

"I was bored and wanted to test their weaknesses between classes," she said by way of explanation as she looked to the floor.

Gwen quickly came to the conclusion this lot may be just a tad eccentric.

The door opened and a fifth student entered dramatically. A familiar looking fifth student.

"You!" she called out.

"Detention," he said as he clapped his hands together. "How so very…Breakfast Club."

"You know him?" Ianto whispered.

"Not really, I saw him earlier and he knew my name. Asked me if I noticed anything wrong yet. It was bizarre," she answered.

"He…did the same to me. And then stared at me. Intensely. Like he really did know me from somewhere," he whispered back.

"Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper, and Toshiko Sato. Would have never pegged you all as the delinquent types…except maybe Owen. And Ianto, I know you got busted on a shoplifting charge one time. And Tosh…you know what, I take that back this make perfect sense. Except for Gwen. Would have never thought I'd find little Ms. Copper in the slammer." They just stared at him.

"So my question for all of you is…have you figured it out yet?"

"You asked me that. Earlier today. What do you mean?" asked Tosh.

He threw his hands up in frustration.

"Alright you four. Describe your fellow students to me."

"Easy. A bunch of pretentious prats who try too hard," said Owen.

"Be more specific. Describe one person."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

"Martha Jones. Cute, frustratingly unavailable. Dark skin. Long hair. Smart. Witty. Going to be my stiffest fucking competition among the pre-med club crowd on the entry exams."

"Alright now describe someone who isn't Martha. Or in this room. Another med club member maybe."

Owen didn't reply. No one else did either.

"Gwen, it's your first day here, right? Tell me about your teachers."

She blinked. "I…I don't really have much to say about them. My first period teacher gave me detention. I'm not really remembering much else though. No specifics anyway."

And that was concerning, really. Why couldn't she recall any of her teachers? Or her classmates? Had she been so upset about getting in trouble she just checked out?

"Thought not. And has it occurred to any of you've been sitting here for half an hour and there's no detention moderator? But please, while you put it all together let's really run with the Breakfast Club thing we've got going. Tell me about yourself Toshiko. What clubs are you in."

As Tosh began to speak, Gwen could not shake the feeling that something was really, and truly off.

"Women in STEM, Engineering Club, Computer Club, and Volunteers for the Future…I needed the volunteer hours," Tosh added to the end.

"And you can't name a single club member either."

"No." she half whispered.

"And Ianto. You've been here a little bit longer than Gwen, and you've got a real attention to detail. So tell me, who sits in front of you in…oh I don't know third period."

He couldn't produce a name. It was obvious from face.

"And about your grades. You're the kind of guy who's smart. Got a knack for history and writing. But you sabotage yourself. Make yourself aggressively average. It's a behavior that makes sense when things are hard for you. Getting bullied. Tough school district, maybe. But why on Earth would you do that at an elite prep school when your friends include the brightest of the med club and the probable valedictorian?"

Ianto's eyes became wide orbs as he tried to come up with some response.

"Funny thing about high school," said the boy. "When you're there it's your whole world. You obsess over it. It's all that matters. But when you're gone it all just starts fading away. Turning to memory. Or so I'm told. But the fading shouldn't happen while you're still there in the thick of it. High school, this completely mundane, boring, artificial social structure, should still make sense to you. It should be fresh on your mind. So why isn't it?"

"And just who the fuck are you then! How do you know all this?" The outburst came from an looking Owen.

"Captain Jack Harkness. And looks like I have to resort to distract measures."

He pulled a gun from his coat jacket.

"No!" shouted Gwen, instinctively ducking towards him to try...something to get him to stop. Tosh and Ianto seemed frozen in terror. Owen grabbed Tosh and tackled her to the ground with him. Jack turned in the gun on himself and shot himself in the head.

He dropped dead. The world was still a minute. Until he gasped back.

And then the world went blurry like a dream fading away.

Gwen woke up the hard ground of the hub. The hub. Not a school basement. And she was no awkward child, but an adult. A confused and dazed adult at the moment. Tosh, Ianto, Owen and Jack were beside her. Martha as well she realized, although Martha seemed less fazed and shocked. As if she'd been waiting for them to come to.

"Took you lot long enough!" Martha explained.

Gwen got up slowly. She watched as the others did as well.

"Everyone in one piece?" asked Jack.

"What happened?" said Ianto , a hand to his beating head. Or Gwen assumed it was beating. Hers was.

"The artifact you touched," explained Jack "Was a Kilpian memory trainer. The Kilpian are a psychic species who live their hold lives in artificial constructed realities. Their young need training on how to do it though, which is where the memory trainer comes in. The Kilpian are naturally attuned to Time a bit more than some other species. Drenched in atron energy. Lots of it. So these things are made with that in mind-programmed to react to atron as a build in release button. If you've done a lot of time traveling, and are covered in atron energy as a result, it's easy to realize something's off once you're in the simulation. That the people around you in the background are mostly just placeholder constructs strung together with some bits and pieces of consciousness from your memories. Like I did. And like Martha did. If you haven't done a whole lot of time traveling, and it needs to be a lot, you have to be nudged out of the thing, like someone pointing out a perspective filter. Although, you all didn't respond to gentle nudging very well. I had to get just a bit on the nose."

Gwen rubbed her head. It was bloody pounding still and the technobabble in Jack's explanation wasn't helping.

"Weirdly this one was loaded up with a bunch of Earth scenarios in it. A coffee shop, flower shop, the pirate ship one would have been fun. But nope. We all ended up as teenaged kids in high school. A boring, lame old high school."

"Makes about as much sense as anything around here," grumbled Owen. Who was now aware and feeling his (lack of) a pulse.

"Wouldn't have been easier just to ask us why I was breathing?"

Jack looked liked he considered it for a second. "Nah, you were all being too thick for that to work."

Myfanwy screeched from overhead. She could see the dim light glowing from Tosh's console as her eyes adjusted to being fully awake.

"I hated high school," said Ianto plainly.

"For once Tea Boy, I think we can agree on something," said Owen.

Gwen just took another look back down at her body, so very grateful not to go home tonight as a sixteen year old girl. Torchwood was strange, fantastic and wonderful. High school was exactly none of those things.

 _All familiar characters property of the BBC._


End file.
